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sourdough rye meal

sourdough rye meal

After seeing some really lovely ryes here recently I thought it was time to give it a go, so this morning whilst refrehing my sour dough i thought rather than toss it out i would put it to work.

I used 500g of coarse rye meal and 100g of white flour 200g of ripe sour dough culture, (just my standard white culture refreshed twice a day normally) and 14g of salt to this i added enough water to make a batter the same consitancy as the sour dough culture and just whisked it with my hand for a few minutes till it felt that it had all come together i then pour / scraped it into a bread tin and used a wet spatula to smooth the top a bit like trowelling cement really dusted it with rye flour and placed it in a plastic bag for 4 hours.

To my great suprise when i returned it had passed the top of the tin and had stuck ever so slightly to the plastic, i hadn't expected it to have made it that far actually. Any way i fired up the combi oven and in 5 minutes i had it in the oven with a bit of steam for 6 or 7 minutes and then let it bake at about 185C for the best part of 40 minutes.

It was then onto the cooling rack and when it was barely cool enough we sliced it to see and taste. It had a certain amount of sourness that we don't normally detect when using the same culture in other doughs.

I was quite pleased with the openess and the texture of the crumb especially as there had been very little mixing to develop what gluten the white flour and the sour dough culture brought to the mix. The German program manager loved it and took the remainder of the loaf home for the family to comment upon, but is still looking for a heavier loaf with what he refers to as champagne style aeration, minute little holes in great profusion. for me it was quite moorish and well worth the 5 minutes it took to bring together the 4 hour proof with virtually no moulding skills required.

another bake was a quick go at Baguettes using instant yeast with 24 hour retardation of the dough and then shaped a quick fermentaion period and baked off, time was a bit of an issue and i think i could have allowed them a bit more final proof but other than that quite happy

It's a pretty open and light crumb for being a 100% rye bread, especially considering that you used coarse rye meal. Does it slice easily or does it crumble? All the breads that I did with rye meal crumbled at every slice.

The rye would probably work out to be 70% when taking into consideration the white flour and the white sourdough content, but still a good lightness achieved for so little effort, it did crumble a little on initial slicing but that was due mostly to the fact that it was still warm, i have some very impatient testers.

overall very pleased and very tasty with that i would really like another slice please to it

Hi Andy i think the rye could have baked a little longer and possibly a little slower but i was not really up in the kitchen area so had to be mindfull of being away from my proper post. But i was really pleased for the small amount of effort for the result.

A good crumb for something like a 70% rye, Yozza. I too have found that despite the wetness of these high rye content, high hydration breads, that they are much simpler than those that require a lot of handling and shaping. These you treat almost like a pudding. And if your rye sour is at its peak when you do your final mix, everything comes together in short order.

That's a fine looking rye. I have always wanted to try that myself, but worried that the flavour might suffer if I omitted the bulk ferment. Now, I don't think so. I think rye has enough flavour so that bypassing the bulk ferment will not make much of a difference to flavour and, in fact, probably helps the structure.

Hi Mebake the Baguettes were a take off from TFL with the dough doing the 24 hr overnight bulk fermentation then the moulding and on the couche for a final proof then onto the trays scored and baked with the luxury of some steam injected for the first 8 minutes or so.

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